African governments cautioned on Japan’s agenda on TICAD

African governments cautioned on Japan’s agenda on TICAD

BY GEORGE KAGAME
Johannesburg


Professor Ben Toruk, a South African economist and legislator has advised African governments to assess whether TICAD-a Japanese development initiative for African countries, differs from other aid programmes from developed countries which have proved inefficient in helping Africa out of poverty so far.

Turok was addressing members of parliament from across Africa attending the 10th session of the Pan African Parliament in Johannesburg today while presenting a paper on the assessment of TICAD 1V conference held earlier in the year in Tokyo.

TICAD- Tokyo International Conference on African Development was launched by Japan in 1993 to promote high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and development partners, it stressed equal partnerships between Africa and developed countries instead of patronage by richer nations.




Turok said TICAD does not offer Africa a different relationship from other developing partners, he termed the relationships as “actually domination which are branded as partnerships”
At the end of the TICAD 1V, Japan promised to double its aid to Africa by 2012.

Then Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fokuda said Fukuda said Japan's official development assistance (ODA) would double by 2012, bringing its five-year average annual ODA to $1.8 billion from the current $900 million. With TICAD, Japan insists that it hopes to promote aid in Africa that was based on partnership and increased ownership of donor funds and projects by African government.

Turok said that for any relationship to be called a partnership it must be mutually agreed as helping both partners even at government level but: “Japan engages in tied aid, wherever they engage in aid, Japan ties their aid to Japanese input, their aid must have conditions such as employing Japanese experts, and using Japanese goods. This is domination not partnership as they have stressed it would be.”



The former Apartheid activist added most developed countries were very interested in Africa today and had hidden behind the aid tag but in truth they are masking their competition for African resources: “There is a revived interested in Africa but in reality China, India, Europe, US and now Japan is for the resources we have on the continent.”

He further that the TICAD was important because the amount of money it suggested was substantial: “But is seems unmanageable because it’s too broad, there’s no institutional infrastructure suggested to manage such a programme I Africa. It is a paper document which will not be realized and therefore Africa should be careful,” he wondered if TICAD added value to Africa rather than Japan.




Turok said that TICAD like other aid initiatives for Africa was a negotiation between African executives and their European colleagues: Aide is a transfer of tax payers’ resources from developed countries to citizens in developing countries not a meeting of executives from donor countries to recipient ones.”